By Your Side
by VerelLupin
Summary: Charles has always had Raven by his side until now but will this force him to finally admit what she's felt all along? Charles/Raven Romantically.


**Ok, I saw this movie and totally fell in love with the chemistry between Charles and Raven.**

**Now I know I'm in the minority but I do like them as a romantic couple but I'm used to being a minority as I am also a Ariadne/Dom Cobb shipper in the Inception world.**

**Enjoy...**

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><p>"You should go with him...it's what you want."<p>

"You promised me you would never read my mind."

"I know. I promised you a great many things, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."

Raven looked up at Magneto, the man offering her the freedom she wanted, the acceptance she'd been looking for all her life.

"I'll take care of him," Moira said as if that would help Raven make up her mind.

Raven felt him squeeze her hand and she looked down at the man who had given her the structure she needed but hadn't really wanted. The one who had provided her with a home and family, the one she'd loved all her life.

She ran her hand through his soft brown hair and gazed into the blue eyes that knew her better than anybody else. He had seen her at her most vulnerable and though he was obtuse about her feelings sometimes, he had never shunned her in any way.

"He is what I want..."

He kissed her hand letting her go.

"But not what I need."

He stared up at her in confusion.

She bent down and morphed her red hair to blonde and grew it so that it curtained them from everybody else on the beach. "Read my mind," she whispered.

His blue eyes widened but he did as he was bid.

A kaleidoscope of images assaulted him.

_Their first meeting._

_"You're hungry and alone. Take whatever you want. We've got lots of food. You don't have to steal. In fact, you never have to steal again."_

_The night she learned he was afraid of thunder._

_"It can't hurt you," she told him as he wrapped his skinny twelve-year-old arms around her equally skinny ten-year old one. "I won't let it."_

_The first time he caught her playing spin the bottle and forcefully dragged her home but not before giving the guy who tried to kiss her an idea of what he'd do to him if he caught him near her again._

_"You're just jealous," she shouted angrily._

_He'd used his power and shut her up then draped her over his shoulder. Once home he had dumped her in the living room before slamming into his own room without saying a word._

_The night he came home so drunk he ended up climbing into her bed._

_He was eighteen and his hormones had been going nuts and she'd been a pretty girl that the liquor had shown him bared no resemblance to himself and she hadn't minded one bit once she was fully awake._

_Though the same could not have been said of him when he woke up in her arms._

_The fights and screaming matches that followed a few years later because he wouldn't let her out of the house in her blue skin or date who she wanted even with a disguise but he came home smelling of sex and cheap beer._

_That night in the study._

_"Would you date me?"_

_"Of course I would." He replied without looking up from his book. "Any young man would be lucky to have you. You are stunning."_

_"Looking like this?"_

_"Like…what. Blue?" He asked startled and she pretended not to mind the shock on his face at her natural form._

_The night she slipped into Erik's room and he'd told her what Charles had denied her for the sake of giving her a home._

_The slow kiss Magneto had given her that had none of the intensity of her first kiss with a drunken Charles or the electricity of his soft touch._

_The pain of seeing him fall to the sandy earth and the regret that it was not her cradling him in her arms but the agent they had just met._

The sight of each and every one of those memories and the feelings each one was infused with lifted the mental block he had put in place when he had first met her. The one he'd put to protect them both.

He saw and felt her emotions as if they were his own and he realized that all this time that she hidden from the world, she had been doing it for him. She had always done it for his sake, for his comfort and yet had never confessed what she had felt for him.

She had thought herself lacking in his eyes, not knowing that he didn't dare change their relationship for fear of losing her all together and yet he had.

And now they were on this beach waiting for their destinies to unfurl. To see which path would keep her with him and which path would make her leave.

It was a split second decision; Charles was going to be rash. For once in his life he would think of something beyond himself and his theories. He would think of Raven and what she needed.

Now he just had to give her a reason.

"I won't ask you to stay..." he began shakily.

She let go and he instantly missed her as she began to get up.

"But I would like you to."

She sat back abruptly causing a puff of sand to rise.

"You want me with you?" She said.

"I always have, I just didn't know it."

Moira gently transferred his head to her lap and excused herself. The rest of the team followed to the carcass of the plane giving them privacy.

Now only Erik and his team stood waiting for her decision. She gave a shake of her head and the poof of them disappearing echoed around him and Raven.

They made it to the hospital and managed to survive the endless hours of operations and the days that followed as they spoke to every doctor and every specialist that she insisted they see, tell them that he'd never walk again.

He had broken down in her arms silently and she absorbed his pain much like Sebastian Shaw had absorbed the energy that had killed Darwin.

They went home together but no longer under the make believe mantle of brother and sister.

Moira came by and decided to speak out on their behalf to the CIA even though they knew it would be a pointless exercise. So Raven left them so he might say goodbye to the flirtation that had been Moira McTaggart.

She saw as he leaned and kissed the other woman and she knew that a little part of Charles had died as he blanked her mind.

Raven returned to his side and pushed him to the gardens he so loved walking in. "I'm sorry you had to do that," she said.

"I am too."

Raven swallowed back the tears and she wondered if Charles would ever truly belong to her. "But not for the reason you think," he said quietly.

She was startled as he turned his chair and pulled her down to him so that her eyes were level with his. "Moira is a good agent, she would have made a great ally and we will certainly need plenty of those later on."

Raven nodded.

As he hesitantly reached for her, Raven knew without being a telepath that he'd been waiting to do this for a long time.

**'Raven, ****stop ****thinking,'** he said in her mind.

"Yes, Charles," she responded obediently against his mouth.


End file.
